Chez Moi

You know they say “be aware of what you tell your children; it may well come back to bite you in your ass”? Well, it happens to me many a time but the ninny that I am, I keep spinning my web of lies and flounder as my son ties me in knots using the same slimy thread.

For instance, when P was very little, he once asked me why we got married. A thousand replies weaved through my head:
“To shove a thumb up your paternal grandparents noses”
“To have hot, monkey sex at the drop of a hat (or any other apparel)”
“To get away from your maternal grandparents when the GRE route got blocked”
but as none of them were U rated, I decided to plumb for a tamer reply and fed him some jazz somewhere along the lines of a megaserial maa:
“so that we could have you, beta!”

When I had just found I was pregnant, I tried to test P’s reactions in a roundabout way. I did not want to give him any concrete idea about the imminent arrival as he is somewhat of a blabbermouth. So I tried my hand at subtlety and asked him:
“would you like to have a baby brother or a sister, kanna?”

To which, he replied:
“yeah, but I don’t cos you wanted only me and nobody else!” (another web I had spun earlier when he first asked for a sib.)

“Er, what if?”

“Well, then you’d have to get married again!”

“What? Where did you get that?”

“You only said, mummy, that mummies and daddies have to get married to have children. So if I should have a brother or a sister, you should get married again. Daddy would be so upset; he would leave!”

Next time around, I shall stick to the tried-and-tested-truth, shall I?

Oh yeah, I’ve got a bun in the oven - again. Am only at week 9 or thereabouts so am probably jumping the gun in putting the news on my blog (but who reads it but my loyal 4 anyway?!) but then, think of all the lovely posts I am missing - runs, projectile vomiting, nausea and other deep joys that my life is so full of now. So I thought, what the heck.

My son just told me he is bored. “Life is boring” are his exact words.

When a 5 year old chucks that line at you, what the hell do you do?

Any pointers?

(Announcer on the telly: “Name one reason why a woman would marry an ugly man?” — with Family Fortunes theme tune in the background)
P: “Well, daddy, you are ugly!”
P’s poor dad: “What? I am ugly?”
P: “er, well yeah, a bit ugly”
P’s dad: “What do you mean a bit ugly?”
P: “Well you wear glasses!”
P’s dad: “If I am ugly, then you must be too!”
P: “No I am not! I am gorgeous! Ask mummy!” 
From the mouth of babes…. 

My son is five years old and ever since he was 2.5, I have been getting subtle digs from the MIL’s side that have gradually become stronger over the years - about her looking after her grandson without me hovering in the background, cluttering up the picture. Before you ask, yes I have left him in her care during the day, in order to acqueise to her hankering, whilst I have taken care of some odd jobs nearby. So what is the problem? Well, she wants to keep him overnight. This is where I draw the line.

A day and a night away from my son is not something I like to contemplate. Truth be told, it is the stuff my nightmares are made of. I lose my temper, I shout but I have to bind him good night and take him to bed; in the morning, I want to be there when he wakes up and comes searching for me. It still takes a while for him to shake off the sleep and the minutes he still lies on my shoulder, holding on to the last vestiges of sleep are too precious for me to let go of, even for a day.

It took me a while to form a bond with him - though I loved him to bits from the minute I set my eyes on him, it was a while before we both relaxed into our respective roles. In fact, as he becomes older, I find we get along better. And I am loathe to test this hard-won bond with my boy by letting him away for a whole day and a night. That is the second part of my nightmare - if I let him go once, he would go away and would not be my little baby who comes crying for his mummy every morning anymore.

I know I have to let go but not yet. He is just five - I want to baby him for some more years yet. Already, he shows signs of growing out of his babyhood by changing his routine - increasingly, he takes himself to bed and acts like a big boy. There will come a day when he can take care of himself but until that day, I want to enjoy every single moment. And yes, that means not letting him stay overnight away from me for a few more years.

My mum let me and brother go off to our father’s native village with assorted aunts, uncles and grandparents from the time we were four - I cannot imagine sending Pratik off like that! Maybe one day, when he is 12 or 13, maybe, certainly not when he is 5 or 6!

I know S thinks I should relax a bit but he is my only baby and I am not ready to spend a night away from him yet.

Am I being a bit too clingy?

‘Get your Easter bonnets in by Friday, as we will be having the Easter Bonnet Parade later on in the day’, stated the missive from the school. Easter bonnet? What the hell! I had visions of P walking up and down his school, looking like Peter Rabbit. Why in God’s name would these boys wear bonnets in the first place anyway? After all, this is the land where the tiniest smudge of pink isn’t allowed anywhere near a boy (lest he become traumatised or gay in the future?) and here we are talking about decking them out in bonnets. That was when I was firmly steered in the direction of caps, hats and other manly accessories. No easy way out, then.

Giving in, I asked around work for ideas. ‘Make a top hat - make it green so it looks like grass and then put Easter eggs and chickens on it’ suggested one colleague. ‘Or, you could dress up a baseball cap to make it look like a nest and place the eggs, chicks and things on it’, quipped another. Whazisthis? Top hats? Nests with chicks and eggs? When did I die and come back as a Blue Peter presenter?

By now, I was panicking big time and decided to take refuge in that temple of modern materialistic society, Tesco’s. And whoop-dee-doo, right at the entrance there was a massive aisle full of Easter-y things. The firang know how to make money, I tell you. Crepe paper, cardboard, balls of cottons, paints, all in a variety of colours, were stockpiled to the ceiling and harried parents were digging into them like they were manna from heaven. I did not have a clue what materials to procure and ended up getting two of everything. Which turned out to be the one smart thing I did.

Once home, the real battle began. I sat with the bag of goodies spread around me, along with other necessities like scissors, sticky tape and baseball cap and realised I did not have any glue. After a long trek for the same, I was now ready to tackle this thing - or so I thought. That was when I realised having ideas is one thing, execution is something else entirely. I sat looking at the pieces of cardboard, felt and the baseball cap alternatively, hoping the spirit of Martha Stewart would come and join me for a while and make the whole thing a doddle. As that did not transpire, I set about trying to tap into hitherto undiscovered, and possibly non-existent, wells of creativity.

As concocting a top hat from pieces of card were beyond my capabilities, especially without a compass to keep me on the curve and narrow, I decided to plump for the baseball cap / nest idea. My thought process ran somewhat as follows: cover the cap with green felt, send some brown felt through the shredder, glue the resultant strips in artistic disarray all over the now-green cap, plonk assorted bits and pieces of junk all over it and hey, bob’s your uncle.

Remember what I said about thought and execution? Well, read it once again ‘cos, as always, reality and my thoughts had nothing in common. For starters, the green felt refused to stick to the cloth cap, even after I slathered half a gallon of glue on it. I now had an extremely sticky ex-cap and some sodden pieces of green felt. Then, I shoved some brown felt through the shredder, hoping for some lengthy pieces of felt which I could twist to look like twigs. But the shredder decided to make a meal of it and I ended up with some brown felt mince. Pulling my hair out at the roots did not help. Not one bit. So I decided to stop fiddling with technology and cut the darned things into strips using old-fashioned scissors.

That complete, next on the menu was the lawn on which I had to lay my nest. Sticking it didn’t work; stitching it proved lot more difficult. I binned the lot and watched ‘House’ for an hour. Contemplated committing blasphemy during one of the breaks by modelling the nest along the lines of Christ’s crown of thorns. Finally, at 11:00 PM, S hit upon the idea of just laying the (spare piece of) green felt on top of the rudimentary circular cardboard crown base I had made, a la a green lawn and just plonking the nest and its assorted bits on top of it. Typically, I wasn’t sure any idea of his would actually work. But as I sat plaiting the brown strips and strategically placing coloured feather and balls of cotton all over it, it seemed like a neat one after all. After grappling with it for a long and sleepy half an hour, I finally finished my creation. And boy was I one chuffed mummy or what?

P adored it when he saw it the next morning, thereby making it every bit worthwhile. I also got lots of ‘ooh’s and ‘aah’s at work so I think I may have pulled this thing off. I realise now that I got off lucky with the Dressing Up as a Fairy Tale character lark the school sprung on me last month. It was by sheer chance that I realised how seriously the other mums took this when I eavesdropped on a coven of them discussing what their children were going to show up as, the next day. Peter Pan! Tinkerbell!! Dick Whittington!!! Jack (not the Ripper, the other one - him with the Beanstalk)!!!! I would never hear the end of it if I sent my little man to school as his own adorable self. I had a major brainwave when I spotted a white sherwani of his hanging in the cupboard, unused and unloved, and made a golden crown to go with it and sent him off as Prince Charming, armed with a red rose, no less!

When I saw the other mums rolling in with huge bonnets, their girlies fighting their way in through swathes of tissue paper or trying to balance a tray of eggs on their heads, I felt rather proud of myself. I had come through this, hopefully without scarring P for life! And now, I am ready for the next challenge. Produce your own mega serial type saga? Come dressed as an eco-warrier? Discover the cure for AIDS for school science project? Easy peasy!

I am now Super Mummy, P says. I can do anything.
Bring it on!